People travel by aircraft to see the sites or attend events. Travel for Aircraft is about travel for aircraft to see them in their various locations — be they museums, static displays, airfield ramps or languishing in fields.

YP-24 — Lockheed’s first fighter aircraft

Lockheed YP-24, note the rear gunner position, retractable landing gear and aiming recticle along the top of the cowling — San Diego Air & Space Museum archive photo

The U.S. Army Air Corps (USAAC) desired a modern replacement of the Berliner-Joyce P-16 and the Detroit Aircraft Corp. (DAC) joined with Lockheed Aircraft to produce the YP-24 in 1930 — the chief designer was Robert Woods of DAC. The aircraft looked much like the biplane P-16 but was a monoplane and with retractable landing gear — which was the Lockheed firms main contribution, essentially the wing of the Lockheed Altair (an evolution of the Lockheed Sirius which was made famous by Charles and Anne Lindbergh in their exploration flights for Pan Am Airways). DAC designed the modern-at-the-time metal fuselage. The following years found both companies in bankruptcy, as fallout from the Great Depression, though Lockheed was reformed less than a week after dissolution. The manufacturing name for the sole prototype then became Lockheed, with the YP-24 becoming their first fighter aircraft to fly. The aircraft was later redesignated Y1P-24 by the USAAC — and, to further complicate its story, the design was taken over by the Consolidated which placed it back under Robert Woods as the Y1A-11. Neither of the design iterations were placed into production but these were advanced designs for the day, nonetheless, though none survive today.